A workload model for topic-based publish/subscribe systems

ABSTRACT

Publish/Subscribe is an asynchronous messaging paradigm that has been an integral part of modern Message Oriented Middle-ware (MOM) frameworks. However, recent initiatives to enhance usability and friendliness of modern web-based clients have ex-tended the use of publish/subscribe schemes beyond middleware. Some of the recent protocols, like Bayeux [6], use topic-based publish/subscribe scheme to exchange messages between front-end web-based clients and back-end servers.

This paper shares our experience in designing a load-generation framework for benchmarking of an HTTP-based publish/subscribe module for an enterprise Java application server. The paper starts with an introduction to topic-based publish/subscribe paradigm by describing the major entities, along with their roles and relation-ships. Major issues related to modeling and benchmarking sys-tems in a topic-based publish/subscribe paradigm are highlighted. We propose an abstract model that is helpful in workload genera-tion, data collection, and benchmarking of such systems. We also share our experience in designing and using a framework for per-formance engineering and improvements of a publish/subscribe system. This framework uses our proposed model. The paper con-cludes with sharing short-comings of the proposed model and framework, and our plans to extend this work for other asynchro-nous and synchronous messaging paradigms.

REFERENCES

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• 9: IBM WebSphere MQ, IBM Corporation, http://www-306.ibm.com/software/integration/wmq/
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications
          Subjects: Tools

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications
          Subjects: Methodologies (e.g., object-oriented, structured)
        D.2.10 Design**
            Subjects: Representation**; Methodologies**

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Measurement, Performance, Standardization, Verification

Keywords:
asynchronous messaging, bayeux, channel-based messaging systems, message oriented middleware (MOM), topic-based publish/subscribe systems